Rebecca J. Nelson (born 1961[1]) is an American biologist and a professor at Cornell University and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Her work focuses on natural genetic diversity for disease resistance in maize.[2]
Nelson's parents were researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Rebecca holds a BA degree from Swarthmore College, 1982 and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington, 1988. She is married to public radio journalist Jonathan Miller[3] and has two children, William and Benjamin.
Nelson began her career at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines between 1988 and 1996. From 1996 to 2001, Nelson led the late blight program at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru starting in 1996. In 1998, Rebecca was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow[1] for her work in combating rice diseases and potato blight.[4][5]
In 2001, Nelson became Professor of Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe-Biology, Plant Breeding & Genetics and International Agriculture & Rural Development at Cornell University. Rebecca teaches an undergraduate course on "Perspectives in International Agriculture and Rural Development" and contributes to other courses in international agriculture and plant pathology. Her research laboratory, based at Cornell University, collaborates with maize geneticists and breeders at Cornell, in Kenya and elsewhere. Ongoing research includes analyzing the genetic architecture of quantitative disease resistance and dissecting quantitative trait loci to identify mechanisms and genes that impair pathogen development, with a particular interest in multiple disease resistance and mycotoxin resistance.[6]